The Collected Letters, Volume 32

There is, in the last Fraser, a very pretty little article on America and its Kansas, &c. troubles;1 which I recognise for the work of Mr. Bristed,2 a gentleman whom I have long heard with pleasure on all such subjects. Candid, loyal, clear, intelligent, a thorough ‘gentleman,’
as we define it;—the only man who throws any real light to me on American questions. He might do a great deal of good to both
countries, and gain the gratitude of all considerate men in both, by continuing and extending in all ways this fine function
of International Interpreter between America and England, for which he has such capabilities. I charge you let him want for
no encouragement on your part. As a mere writer I find him very good; style perfect for his purpose. Only I wish he would give up saying ‘at the North,’ ‘at the South,’ which is a mere solecism and careless Yankeeism: no mortal would think of saying ‘at Germany,’ though he would ‘at Berlin’ or the like: the prepositions AT and IN, we imagined, had long ago settled their account!— Please submit to him also the sad case of the word ‘Fillibuster’ (I think
that is the current spelling): two-hundred years ago the word Freebooter was rife among certain English naval gentlemen (whose life corresponded) in the West India Islands; the French of the same
trade caught it up there (a nice synonym of Boucanier, eater of boucan, or dried salt flesh);—caught it up, but made it into Flibûtier, written Flibustier by the old printers, &c.;—and from this origin have sprung the dreadful progeny of Fillibusters, Filliblusters, Fillibustiers, and I know not what, which are oozing over into our own newspapers;3 and which ought to be killed wherever met with by every respectable man.

But all this is as nothing; mere preliminary talk, and other men's business, not my own. What I wished you to ask Mr. Bristed
on my behoof is a ridiculous-looking question, but one I really wish to have answered, for uses it has to me. ‘Speaking to Bunkum.’ What is the indubitably right spelling, Buncombe? or as above Bunkum? and where is the Buncombe or Bunkum?4—I really wish to know (correct, as if on oath!); but am in no hurry about it for months to come. Only, please, bear it in
mind; and tell me so soon as you learn.

1. “What Are the United States Coming To?” Fraser's Magazine 54 (Nov. 1856): 611–22. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which stated that the people of federal territories should decide by vote whether they would enter the Union as free or
slave states, was intended to heal the breach between pro- and antislavery factions in the two territories. Instead, northern
abolitionists formed armed emigrant associations to populate Kansas, while advocates of slavery came in from neighboring Missouri.
In May, a proslavery group wrecked the newspaper office and the hotel in Lawrence, Kansas. Reprisals followed, and until 1858 there was periodic bloodshed along the border. The article says that while America has become increasingly prosperous, its
ideals have “withered and waned” as the recent success of proslavery factions in Kansas shows. America is “not one America, but two Americas—not a nation but a Union … of states which divide themselves by irresistible natural affinities into two great groups.
… The north eastern colonies … peopled mainly by the descendants of God-fearing, intelligent, industrious men who had gone
hither ‘for conscience sake,’ and … the love of constitutional liberty” (54:612) and the South, where the population was “mongrel”:
“Cavalier gentlemen, … Cavalier vagabonds,” refugees from Cromwell, convicts and paupers (54:613). The North, confident in
its governmental institutions, the article reports, has had little interest in politics, while in the South, where the production
of raw cotton and dependency on slave economy is increasing, political interest and power have also increased. There they
have pursued “relentlessly and victoriously … their object of securing an unlimited area for the extension of slavery” (54:616).
In Kansas, the “conduct of the South has been … aggressive, insolent, overbearing” (54:620). If civil war, or worse still,
the domination of the North by the South is to be avoided, the people of the North must, according to the article, unite in
voting for the Republican nominee for the presidency, John Charles Fremont (1819–90), and against the Democrat, James Buchanan (1791–1868; see TC to CBU, 3 March 1854) (54:620). Fremont was in fact defeated, 4 Nov., and Buchanan became president, 1857–61.

2. TC assumed the article was by Charles Astor Bristed (1820–74), critic and diarist, but Wellesley identifies the author as probably William Henry Hurlbert (1827–95), journalist and abolitionist; imprisoned for his views in Richmond, Virginia, 1861–62.

3. See also Frederick, Works 15:182. The Oxford English Dictionary confirms that the form “filibuster” began to be used about 1850–54 for certain U.S. adventurers in the W. Indies and Central America, superseding “flibustier.”

4. “Bunkum,” empty or meaningless talk, from a remark made in the 1820s by a congressman from Buncombe County, North Carolina, Felix Walker (1753–1828), who had made a long and irrelevant speech that he said was not addressed to the House of Representatives but “to Buncombe.”